I say this a lot, but “nomacs” image viewer/editor. I take a lot of time lapse videos and I have directories of like, 50000 identically-sized images each on a smb server over gigabit ethernet and nomacs can open from a directory and quickly cycle through the photos using the arrow keys, without resetting the current pan/zoom setting (important for me), without any trouble. It takes about as long to open the directory of photos as it takes for my samba client to download the directory data.

It also has a lot of cool little quality of life features, including lots of shortcut keys for overlaying metadata and such. It has basic image editing capability as well. The only other image viewer I use is digikam, which is more for organizing personal photos. Otherwise it’s all nomacs, baby.

I would argue that MS Office feels like it’s from the last century as well. Even the newest versions of it feel like it was made by people who have never had to use it.

Also the Bip cannot spy on you unless you install the official app. It’s limited to its interactions with apps over bluetooth, and I just use Gadgetbridge.

According to the wiki, only one firmware is supported, and it’s early support with missing features. The wiki may be outdated, though.

What Android software could you use for managing it? Gadgetbridge seems to not have fully-developed support for it, even with their preferred firmware.

I’m using Gadgetbridge with a hacked Amazfit Bip and I’m pretty happy. I like the multicolor TFT LCD w/no default backlight on the Bip, which is very readable in bright light and only requires a quick button press to get the backlight on in the dark, or you can waste more battery life and have it turn on when you turn it towards yourself. It’s also got built-in GPS/workout tracking (you have to manually flash the A-GPS data occasionally…), the ability to load little open source apps, sleep tracking, heart rate tracking, notifications, custom watchfaces, etc which I’m sure the Pinetime has most of. The battery also lasts ages since it uses such a low-power LCD.

I’m not saying the Pinetime isn’t good, but decent alternatives exist. I would love a truly open-source smart watch, but maybe when the project is slightly more mature. I guess I could always get one and contribute to it… $30 is really not much. I’ll definitely try it if my Bip breaks.

Still no html composing, right? It would be a serious contender for many people if it just had that feature… Even though, from my experience, most personal email doesn’t really use html…

I agree. I’m very grateful to OSS developers. I use almost exclusively OSS software every day at this point, and it wouldn’t be possible without the countless people devoting countless hours of their valuable time to these projects.

So, a question to devs, especially for smaller, more approachable projects: I have a minor (plus a bit more) in CS, a lifetime of casual coding, but never really built anything larger-scale than a C-based sh-like shell in one of my CS courses, or many years ago an IRC front-end for a chatbot engine. Mostly I just write scripts (sometimes kinda complex), or small C/C++ projects. I would try to contribute to a project directly, but I don’t want to step on toes, and most projects have people who are deeply intertwined in the code of the project. It feels impossible to get involved in any way other than testing without possibly just annoying people who have been doing it for years. I’ve known enough intimidating grizzled *nix guru people to make me paranoid that I’ll just get in the way.

How do you get a foothold in a project? Should I just start with creating my own OSS project, and once I get somewhere where I’m familiar with the flow and project management and such, then I can consider contributing more to other projects?

Or is it really more helpful to the community to just test stuff, create documentation, answer questions, etc? Would becoming another dev be more helpful to OSS, or would working on supporting projects in these other ways be more helpful?

I wonder if it will get forked by anyone.

Their swipe needs a lot of work. You must start on the correct letter. It will base the rest of the word off of the first letter, so if you fat-finger it at all, it will get the wrong word. Sometimes it also just doesn’t give you any suggestions and you have to swipe/type it over again. It really needs some fuzzy searching algorithm to help with thumb typing/swiping.

Anysoftkeyboard

I’m a bit frustrated with them. They don’t seem to be very committed to deGoogling, which is their prerogative I guess, but if not, why bother making an open keyboard? Basically if you want to use a version of the app that actually works relatively well, especially with swiping, you need to download the beta or alpha version, which require joining a Google Group and using Google Play to download.

Is Organic Maps better than OsmAnd? I’ve started liking OsmAnd, now that I’ve added some imported maps that were merged with OpenAddresses. They are still backward to local address formats, though.

Does Organic Maps have address data for the USA?

I have very different priorities. I’ll never use anything with a walled garden, that isn’t hackable. I’ve also weaned myself almost completely off Google services and apps at this point. Also I can get a brand new unlocked Android phone that does everything I want with decent specs and almost stock Android (minimal bloat) for under $200. The only positive that really interests me that was mentioned in this thread is the longer security support.